Online, Turn-Based Battletech – Development Logs

Continuing work on the email system.

I’m back to work today after my family visit and subsequent unexpected flu bug. I fixed a problem with the registration script yesterday and got the changes posted. When I get off work this evening, I’ll resume work on the email system. Right now, it does check for new mail, although no mail exists on the server, so nothing is ever retrieved. I simply need to get the composition portion in place, along with address book, rules and permissions. Composition is fairly simple and will take more time to think about how to execute than to actually write it. What makes it complicated and hard to think about are the other extra items. In any case, I’ll be working on that every day for the next week, or however long it takes to finish it.

In looking at the registration script, I realize that I need to build a better error-reporting system. It turns out that when the submit button was clicked, the script that completes registration was never being triggered. I got an email from an individual who was trying to register. If that person had never contacted me about the problem, I wouldn’t have known that the problem existed because no error messages were ever being generated. After I finish the email submission portion, I’ll be going back through each server script and building in a responder before, during and after each contact so that it returns a “1” for an expected result and returns other elements depending on what went wrong. For security reasons, users will not receive detailed error results. Results with too much detail, can benefit those with malicious intent. It’s better to simply say an error occurred and send detailed reports to admin with the who / what / where / when / why.

Catalyst Game Labs is pleased to attend the inaugural Pax Unplugged! The action begins in just under three days in Philadelphia, running from November 17th to the 19th. We’ll have our usually fantastic BattleTech and Shadowrun games for sale, including … Continue reading →